This year’s election for governor of the Golden State is just plain weird.

Jerry Brown is seeking a history-making fourth term, and his top challenger — trailing by nearly 40 points in recent polls — is a Tea Party darling still on probation after airport security in 2012 caught him with a loaded handgun registered to an 83-year-old woman. Behind him is another Republican so lacking in name recognition that he actually fell behind a registered sex offender in one poll.

With vote-by-mail ballots about to go out this week for the June 3 primary, there has been no statewide TV advertising, no memorable stump speeches, no dirty tricks to speak of. And it’s impossible to find a pollster, pundit or political science professor who sees any viable threat to Brown. It’s been more than a half century since the race for the state’s top political job seemed like such a done deal.

But even if this year’s race looks like a foregone conclusion, the way it unfolds will likely portend where policy and politics in the state Capitol are headed. And if nothing else, it’s an amazing contrast with what happened just four years ago.

In 2010, Brown fought a fierce battle against GOP nominee Meg Whitman, a Silicon Valley billionaire who poured $144 million of her own money into her losing campaign. Brown’s campaign as of mid-March had more than 20 times more money than the combined war chests of his two main Republican competitors. He hasn’t even bothered to hold a public campaign event, while his two main competitors are eager to talk to anyone who’ll listen.

Four years ago, state lawmakers were still waist-deep in red ink. Today, the debate is whether to save or spend the state’s surplus.

In last month’s Field Poll, Brown didn’t merely slaughter his closest challenger, Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly. He had far more than twice the support of Donnelly and Republicans Neel Kashkari and Andrew Blount combined. Blount, the Laguna Hills mayor who despite low name recognition and paltry fundraising had still edged or tied Kashkari in polls, threw in the towel last week.

State GOP Chairman Jim Brulte pretty much said at the GOP convention in Burlingame in March that the party is writing off the race. But it could be worse, some delegates whispered: They’d rather see Brown lose, but noted that by keeping Democratic lawmakers from running wild with new spending, he’s Sacramento’s “adult in the room.”

So the stage is set for California’s biggest blowout since 1950, when incumbent Republican Gov. Earl Warren trounced Democrat James Roosevelt by 30 points, carrying all 58 counties.

Roosevelt, FDR’s eldest son, “knew he wasn’t going to win,” but ran mostly to keep his party alive, said historian and State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr, now a University of Southern California professor. Likewise, “you have to admire the doggedness of the Republicans who are making their way though this campaign and keeping their party alive,” he said.

Brown isn’t immune to criticism. Roughly half of California voters want to pull the plug on the high-speed rail project he still champions, and most don’t like the twin Delta tunnels he wants built to address water issues. Most want to legalize marijuana; he opposes it. And as Kashkari tirelessly points out, the state ranks low in job creation and school performance while having the nation’s highest poverty rate.

Yet Kashkari and Donnelly so far have been unable to spark the kind of outrage they need for real traction.

This is the first California governor’s race using the new open-primary system, in which the top two vote-getters advance to November’s general election regardless of party. Supporters say the system will reduce the influence of hard-core partisan voters and buoy the candidacy of moderate candidates. But it’s not playing out that way so far.

As Donnelly struggled to raise money last year, some pundits thought deep-pocketed GOP donors were keeping their powder dry for a more moderate option. Yet Kashkari reaped neither the contributions nor the poll numbers many political analysts had expected. He sent out targeted mailers last week and plans to launch television ads soon, but it will be a frugal blitz at best.

Best known for overseeing the U.S. Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program to bail out Wall Street, Kashkari wants to “unleash the private sector” from regulation, especially manufacturing and energy; he envisions a California oil and gas “fracking” boom much like North Dakota’s. He also wants corporate tax breaks for any company that brings 100 or more jobs or builds a new plant in the state. And he’d like to see overtime pay kick in only after a 40-hour workweek, not after an eight-hour day.

Kashkari also wants to gut the state Education Code and let individual schools decide how to spend state money. He would tie higher-education funds to campus success rates, while putting more UC and CSU courses online and offering free tuition to science, technology, engineering and math students in exchange for a cut of future earnings.

Donnelly’s campaign slogan is “Patriot, Not Politician.” He speaks of the “foundational principles” of “freedom, prosperity, security and responsibility” as he aims to reduce or remove government in all areas of Californians’ lives.

A staunch gun-rights advocate and former Minuteman anti-illegal-immigration activist, Donnelly opposes abortion and wants to slash taxes and state spending, halt all new state regulations, shutter or privatize various state agencies, end Obamacare and reverse Brown’s “realignment” program that sent state prisoners to county jails.

Many Republicans agree with him, but it’s a hard sell in a state where Democrats hold a 15-point voter registration edge and nonpartisans tend to lean left.

Other candidates include Republican Glenn Champ, a registered sex offender who also did prison time for voluntary manslaughter but now says on his website that he’s a changed man and “a new breed of Christian soldier moving forward in the army of the lord, on the highway of righteousness, stomping on the devil’s head, with a new song of righteousness’s (sic) in our hearts.”

And then there’s Democrat Akinyemi Agbede, a Fresno doctoral student and self-proclaimed “super-genius” who wants nothing more than to ensure that “the beautiful smiling faces of the people of California will forever be permanent.”

Brown said in February he seeks re-election “with humility and the realization that there’s a great responsibility in the work that lies ahead.” He said he’ll focus on maintaining a balanced budget and a healthy reserve fund, implementing the new local-control funding formula for K-12 schools, and continuing to oversee prison realignment.

“After the primary, nobody’s thinking that Jerry Brown is going to get defeated or that it necessarily will be a close race, but he will have a legitimate opponent,” said veteran GOP strategist Ken Khachigian, who advised Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.

Whoever that opponent is, he “can certainly raise a lot of challenges; he can put a mirror to the face of the government,” Khachigian added. “Jerry has reined in the left-wingers in the Legislature, making him look moderate by comparison. Nevertheless, this is not a state without problems.”

This year’s election landscape, UC San Diego’s Kousser said, doesn’t mean that California will always be ruled by a Democrat.

California “is still a competitive state at the top of the ticket,” he said, “if you have a truly self-financed candidate who fits that California Republican mold of socially moderate and fiscally conservative.”

For now, however, “everybody is waiting for a better time to run,” Kousser said.

Perhaps like next time, when California’s lieutenant governor is expected to be one of the top Democrats seeking the No. 1 job.

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